American politics

The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Perp walk

I'VE been struggling to find something, anything, to say about the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and now I think I've found it. The New York Times reports on French shock at the broadcast footage of New York City police subjecting Mr Strauss-Kahn to a handcuffed "perp walk":

Though horrified by those alleged crimes, the French press and political elite on Monday seemed perhaps more scandalized still by the images of Mr. Strauss-Kahn's brusque treatment by the New York police, and his exposure in the American media.

“I found that image to be incredibly brutal, violent and cruel,” the former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou told France-Info radio on Monday, referring to widely published photographs of a beleaguered-looking Mr. Strauss-Kahn, handcuffed and led by several New York police officers. “I am happy that we do not have the same judicial system.”

I have to admit, I was similarly a bit shocked by the image. And the French weren't the only ones surprised. In the Netherlands, newspapers wrote that American police stations "have no back doors" through which the accused can be ushered out incognito. The greater anonymity Dutch justice tries to accord to the accused is encapsulated in the regulation that the press may refer to those accused of crimes, but not yet convicted, using only their first names and last initials. (In the case of trials involving the already famous, this would result in absurdities, and the rule appears to have been waived in the case of the trial of "Geert W." on charges of inciting hatred and discrimination.)

These are very violent images and I think that it [the American system] doesn't distinguish between the director of the I.M.F. and any other suspect. It's the idea of the equality of rights… It's also a much more violent judicial system because they don't take into account mitigating circumstances as we do, and so, if you choose to plead not guilty and you're convicted, you get a maximum sentence.

Mr Brody "takes them seriously" in the sense of considering them seriously, and deciding that he disagrees. The French judicial system, he writes, has no fifth amendment and no trial by jury. This leads to trials that are less theatrical, as defendants do not perform for the benefit of juries, but also far more hierarchical: defendants are subjugated to the authority of the magistrate who grills them directly.

Regardless, it seems pretty clear that the reason why I, and the Dutch, and the French were shocked to see Mr Strauss-Kahn being walked along, handcuffed, had little to do with whose judicial system is more solicitous of the dignity of the accused in general. Rather, it had to do with the surprise of seeing a wealthy, powerful member of an international governing body subjected to the same treatment by police that an ordinary joe would receive if accused of the same crime. Another line of Ms Joly's quoted in the New York Times article brings this out:

Ms. Joly, who is now a leader of the French Green Party expected to run in next year's presidential election, added that this sort of media spectacle might be “more violent for a celebrity than for an unknown person,” but noted that the American justice system “doesn't distinguish between the director of the I.M.F. and any other suspect. It's the idea of equal rights.” *

That asterisk leads to a footnote explaining that the Times added more of Ms Joly's comments for context, because they seemed to have been misunderstood by readers. When Ms Joly says the system doesn't distinguish between average folks and the powerful, she's congratulating us.

i support the idea of equality of treatment, and i don't think being an IMF director should make a jot of difference.

At the same time, parading people in front of TV cameras before they have been tried and judged seems a bit barbaric and pointless. What if the person happens to be innocent? You have needlessly subjected them to humiliation and terrible publicity.

Once the person is convicted, I'm fine with the TV cameras being rolled out. But I can't really congratulate the Americans for their "perp walk" system, sorry.

Perp walks are stupid and rather pointlessly humiliating, at least before conviction. I'd be happy if they disappeared, but there are so many more substantial problems with the criminal justice system that I'd rather not divert precious energy and attention spans from the other issues.

Like, for instance, we live in a country that has more or less accepted violent prison rape as par for the course.

As a proud socialist, DSK (and his supporters) should consider this an act of faith - not every politician/financier is given the opportunity to experience first-hand how society's outcasts live. And if he really wants to wear his socialist credentials on his sleeve, DSK should demand equal jail conditions for himself so that he can experience how prison's outcasts - sexual offenders - live.

Then again, it's probably easier to run on the Socialist ticket when it involves $3000/night hotels and 1st Class transatlantic flights.

I think the post misses the point. The problem with the "perp walk" is that it's done on people who have yet to be tried, making a mockery of the presumption of innocence. This is particularly bad in a trial that will be decided by a popular jury and an elected judge that answers to an electorate that is being shown the man as guilty even before the trial starts. In short, it makes a fair trial impossible.

All this won't matter if the evidence is clear, especially against him - then he'll go and serve his thirty years in jail and nobody will complain. But if the evidence is murky or inconclusive, the verdict will be tainted.

The French really have their knickers in a twist over this because the man was very likely going to be their next president and very likely would have been a good one. Most are sick of Sarko, and he has not managed to make much of a dent in the problems facing the country, but now it could easily happen that he is re-elected.

It is also true that the folks whinging about the photos are largely the kind of folks, on the left very largely, for whom anything to do with the US is axiomatically bad, and who just lost their best chance the presidency. Holland, Aubrey, Segolene, nobody could touch him for brains and experience and the kind of personal force needed to run the country.

On the other hand, assuming the accusations are true, if DSK was going to blow up like this, better now than in six months or a year or two.

Personally I wish we'd seen a lot more perp walks in the the international banking community.

In my opinion, the photos don't damage the man nearly as much as the allegations themselves. The photos are embarrassing, but the allegations are a thousand times worse.
If the newspapers didn't have perp walk photos to publish alongside their articles reporting this event, they'd just use stock photos. Either way, his constituents would be reading about allegations of sexual assault in an article including a picture of him.

When I heard about the reaction to the picture, my mind went to Ferris Bueller: "A man with priorities so far out of wack doesn't deserve such a fine automobile." I think it's a fair point to protect anonymity, but I wouldn't be shocked to find a country does something different.

I also think "violent" in most people's minds conjures images of something physical. It's weird to read a photograph or a system that allows for a photograph to be published described as "violent". It's a weird use of the word; probably a language thing. It may also be a sign of my lack of sophistication, so I'll move on.

Last thing I'll say is on the comment that the US criminal justice system doesn't take into account mitigating circumstances. What a bizarre comment too. It seems the basis for that is that we have allow plea bargains. Maybe I'm missing something there.

Eric Idle hysterically shouting "Come see the violence inherent in the system!" immediately comes to mind. Violence seems to have recently taken on additional definition. "Violence" is a way of saying "unjust" in such a way that makes it sound both harsher and, more importantly, less subjective. In any given situation, psychical violence is easily and objectively understood to either have or have not taken place. What is just is not quite as straightforward. The metaphor works fine the first few times around but in the long run the stronger word loses its potency in course of supporting the weaker meaning. One could say such people are doing violence to the English language [hurr hurr].

"doesn’t distinguish between the director of the I.M.F. and any other suspect"

I think there is certainly an argument for more discretion before the accused is found guilty. Let's get hypothetical here for a moment: the case is thrown out as the accuser's story falls apart under closer scrutiny and DSK is cleared of all charges. Does anyone realistically believe the IMF will reinstate him after the considerable absence necessitated by clearing his name? Perhaps the French would still elect him as their next President, but in my judgement, France seems to be the exception in that regard (this conspiracy theory story circulating France strikes me as both absurd and patently French).
While it would impossible to keep this case under wraps, parading a man who has been found guilty of nothing in front of the cameras is premature. Wait for the verdict, then should he be found guilty, put him in front of the cameras. In the meantime, leave him be.

As for equality of treatment, should he be found guilty, I suspect that he'll be serving his sentence in a facility that is significantly more luxurious than those usually reserved for violent sex offenders - and that is not right.

The American media does disservice to a mostly fair judicial system by their compulsion to provide juicy bits to readers, and spits on the face of the notion of innocent-until-proven-guilty. Combined with the fact that the deciders of an accused's fate are regular Joes who get their daily fixes of newspapers and talk radio, the sensationalism of the media undermines the American justice system.
Take the Casey Anthony trial. Is there any chance that the 12 peers selected to be the jury be impartial?
The same media then expresses outrage when it turns out, several years later, that the judicial system wrongly convicted innocents. All the blame then goes to the prosecutors and the judge, none to the jury who are the most critical cog-in-the-wheel.

The question is not: "Was DSK treated inhumanely," but "Are all American prisoners treated inhumanely?" Maybe this arrest will get Americans a step closer to reforming their prison system.

Americans will not support preferential treatment for celebrity prisoners (although, even if it's not institutionalized, I'm sure it happens in practice). We will support changing conditions for EVERYONE, though.

One correction: it is not proper to say that Kahn is innocent until proven guilty. The actual legal standard is that the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This creates a rebuttable presumption in favor of the defendant, and allocates the burden of proof onto the government. It is a subtle distinction, but one that is important -- a defendant's actual "innocence" is unknown prior to trial (he may in fact be guilty, but we just haven't legally proven it yet), but we artificially create a legal starting position of "not guilty" until proven otherwise. Saying "innocent until proven guilty" is only an allocation of the burden of proof, not a statement of fact.

MS you seem to have missed the point a bit. I can't speak for France, but as a Brit - a quasi-European if you will - the reaction to DSK's perp walk is not a happy feeling that America has equal rights. It's a reminder that America is happy to inflict a higher level of violence and humiliation on prisoners than we would find acceptable. For example, the handcuffs - are they really necessary? Whatever he is accused of, DSK is hardly the sort of Rambo who would overpower his police escort and flee the court, guns blazing.

Slightly off-topic, America also tolerates prison rape in a way that most of Europe would not. It also accepts the ability of prison guards to inflict extreme punishments on prisoners. And it is too happy to bend the law - Bradley Manning would not have suffered so much ill-treatment in the UK.

Perhaps instead of national self-congratulation, you could use this occasion to discuss some of America's less uplifting qualities?

The thing about perp walks is that historically it showed who had been arrested, allowed people to attach the charges to the person, and that they had not been abused. There is a real sense in which it is an integral part of our open, public judicial system. Though there is a lot that needs to be fixed in it.

It should also be noted that perp walks are in fact mostly reserved for high-profile cases and to some extent high-profile people in deep trouble. Your average Joe is mostly not shown to the public in that way because nobody cares.

He's accused of trying to rape a woman, and of punching her in the face. And the violence that people are worried about is him being led away in handcuffs? How about a little sympathy for the victim here?

And actually, it seems to me that the violence that really is upsetting people is not the violence of him being handcuffed, but the "violence" done to his image by the pictures being shown worldwide. So, yeah, I'm with ccusa on this one - they don't care about the reality, just the damage to the image, and that shows priorities so far out of whack that I have a hard time even comprehending the thinking.

martin horn:

I disagree. I think that what they are saying is exactly that the photos damage him more than the accusations do. I think the mindset is "Oh, he's a powerful man. Powerful men do what they want to women, that's normal. But a powerful man in handcuffs, that's unfair! That's violence!"

I don't agree with that mindset at all, but I think that's what they are saying.